One of the first posts on this blog discussed our planned workshop on what we have been calling Digital Research and Editing Environments (or DREE). It was held almost a month ago, on 7 July, and proved to be a fascinating and thought-provoking event. Parts of the workshop were live-streamed, and you can watch both the opening panel discussion and the final round up session at http://livestre.am/Rkv7. We are very grateful indeed to Philip Schofield, Mark Hedges and Rob Iliffe for their presentations on the Bentham Project, TextVRE and the Newton Papers Project respectively.
In the intervening weeks we have been sifting through the dominant themes and ideas that emerged during the workshop's 'Ideas Cafe'. Following the main panel session, the delegates divided into four groups, each of which was charged with focusing on a particular question, whether authorship, skills and training, ongoing engagement or the wider research ecosystem. The discussions have been summarised in a short paper published in SAS-Space, the School of Advanced Study's e-repository (http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3087/). We hope that this will be the first of a series of meetings looking at digital editing and the tools that are being developed to support it.
Showing posts with label digital editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital editing. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Digital editions and crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing has been discussed as an element of digital editing projects for some time now. In practice, however, it has come to mean the crowdsourcing of transcriptions, at least in an academic context. There are some strikingly successful examples of this approach. I can hardly fail to mention the Transcribe Bentham project at University College London. At the time of writing it has 1,291 registered users and there have been 11,383 edits. The project seems to have been particularly successful in building a sense of community among those who have contributed, and is careful to acknowledge their efforts (for example in a 'leader board').
Another project which has received publicity recently is the Civil War Diaries Transcription Project at the University of Iowa. The interface is extremely simple, and unlike Bentham, there is not even a requirement for users to register (an email address is optional). There is also no real editorial guidance provided so it will be very interesting to see the general quality of submissions (which will be checked before publication).
Both of these projects have developed bespoke interfaces, albeit a very simple one in the latter example. A new tool from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University may help others to adopt this approach without having to spend time on potentially costly software development. Scripto is described as 'a light-weight, open source, tool that will allow users to contribute transcriptions to online documentary projects' and has enormous potential in a range of humanities disciplines. Crucially it supports version control and a full, presumably customisable, editorial workflow.
It remains to be seen whether the success that has been achieved in the crowdsourcing of transcriptions, or in the correction of OCR, will transfer to other elements of the editorial process. ReScript, for example, is planning to produce a crowdsourced new edition of the Alumni Oxonienses, with contributors identifying individuals, suplying corrections and adding new information. This is a much more subjective process than transcription (although of course there are subjective elements here too) and it remains to be seen whether we will be able to make it work for a scholarly edition.
Another project which has received publicity recently is the Civil War Diaries Transcription Project at the University of Iowa. The interface is extremely simple, and unlike Bentham, there is not even a requirement for users to register (an email address is optional). There is also no real editorial guidance provided so it will be very interesting to see the general quality of submissions (which will be checked before publication).
Both of these projects have developed bespoke interfaces, albeit a very simple one in the latter example. A new tool from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University may help others to adopt this approach without having to spend time on potentially costly software development. Scripto is described as 'a light-weight, open source, tool that will allow users to contribute transcriptions to online documentary projects' and has enormous potential in a range of humanities disciplines. Crucially it supports version control and a full, presumably customisable, editorial workflow.
It remains to be seen whether the success that has been achieved in the crowdsourcing of transcriptions, or in the correction of OCR, will transfer to other elements of the editorial process. ReScript, for example, is planning to produce a crowdsourced new edition of the Alumni Oxonienses, with contributors identifying individuals, suplying corrections and adding new information. This is a much more subjective process than transcription (although of course there are subjective elements here too) and it remains to be seen whether we will be able to make it work for a scholarly edition.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Digital editing and digital editions
Yesterday I took part in a workshop organised by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) on 'Digital editing and digital editions'. In the first session, two Cambridge academics, Eleanor Robson and John Rink, talked respectively about the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC) and the Online Chopin Variorum Edition (OCVE). The first of these is truly a labour of love, with those involved giving their time for free to provide a workspace and tools of which anyone in the field may take advantage. This is an approach which seems to have become embedded in digital editing before many other areas of the digital humanities - there are generic, and even interdisciplinary, elements of the editing process which may be very well served by a central resource of this kind. A cuneiform digital edition may look unfamiliar to a medieval or early modern historian, but the approach and many of the processes are very recognisable indeed.
The OCVE has been developed over several years with funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, and it is already transforming the way in which performers and scholars alike interact with the works of Chopin. In the variorum tradition, it brings together multiple first editions and revisions, allowing detailed comparison (at the level of the bar) and providing the opportunity to produce 'personalised' editions of a particular work. It's a fascinating project, which has taken a truly innovative approach to digital editing, and one from which many others could learn.
A closing roundtable discussion drew out some of the questions raised by the speakers, and again identified the degree of commonality that exists between disciplines. As is now customary at any digital event, there was considerable emphasis on sustainability and preservation, in technical, financial and academic terms. In this context, the principles of openness and of identifying and adopting common standards were emphasised. The logical extension of this, greater interoperability, was also much discussed.
All of this is enormously encouraging for a project like ReScript, which is being developed on precisely these principles.
The OCVE has been developed over several years with funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, and it is already transforming the way in which performers and scholars alike interact with the works of Chopin. In the variorum tradition, it brings together multiple first editions and revisions, allowing detailed comparison (at the level of the bar) and providing the opportunity to produce 'personalised' editions of a particular work. It's a fascinating project, which has taken a truly innovative approach to digital editing, and one from which many others could learn.
A closing roundtable discussion drew out some of the questions raised by the speakers, and again identified the degree of commonality that exists between disciplines. As is now customary at any digital event, there was considerable emphasis on sustainability and preservation, in technical, financial and academic terms. In this context, the principles of openness and of identifying and adopting common standards were emphasised. The logical extension of this, greater interoperability, was also much discussed.
All of this is enormously encouraging for a project like ReScript, which is being developed on precisely these principles.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Digital research and editing environments workshop
Digital research and editing environments offer humanities researchers the opportunity greatly to extend the range of methodologies open to them through the use of advanced online text analysis tools. However, their adoption remains highly localised and unevenly distributed because of, among other things, lack of awareness, the inappropriate configuration of editing tools, lack of institutional support, and the instability and unfamiliarity of interfaces.
This workshop will look at the current state of the field from three viewpoints:
• the researcher, open to learning new skills but wary of the transience, inflexibility and insecurity of some services;
• the editor, looking to broaden the reach of his or her published output, but requiring complex and sometimes bespoke workflows
• the technologist, eager to understand researchers’ needs but unsure how these will develop and change over time
For those attending the workshop, issues arising from the speakers’ presentations will be discussed in an ‘Ideas Café’, which will be followed by an open discussion session. While this workshop will be particularly useful for practitioners currently working on or with digital research and editing environments, the IHR actively invites contributions from researchers and scholars who may have further observations, experience of, or different insights into the adoption of these new tools and technologies. Parts of the workshop will be live streamed through the IHR's History SPOT service, with an option to contribute in real time, allowing interested parties who cannot attend to ask questions during the open discussion. A link to this video will be posted once it becomes available.
This workshop will be held on 7 July 2011 and run from 12.30 to 4.30pm.
For full details, including speaker biographies, please go to www.history.ac.uk/events/event/2912
This workshop will look at the current state of the field from three viewpoints:
• the researcher, open to learning new skills but wary of the transience, inflexibility and insecurity of some services;
• the editor, looking to broaden the reach of his or her published output, but requiring complex and sometimes bespoke workflows
• the technologist, eager to understand researchers’ needs but unsure how these will develop and change over time
For those attending the workshop, issues arising from the speakers’ presentations will be discussed in an ‘Ideas Café’, which will be followed by an open discussion session. While this workshop will be particularly useful for practitioners currently working on or with digital research and editing environments, the IHR actively invites contributions from researchers and scholars who may have further observations, experience of, or different insights into the adoption of these new tools and technologies. Parts of the workshop will be live streamed through the IHR's History SPOT service, with an option to contribute in real time, allowing interested parties who cannot attend to ask questions during the open discussion. A link to this video will be posted once it becomes available.
This workshop will be held on 7 July 2011 and run from 12.30 to 4.30pm.
For full details, including speaker biographies, please go to www.history.ac.uk/events/event/2912
Welcome to ReScript
Welcome to this new blog, which will be recording the progress of our JISC-funded project to enhance the usability/learnability of ReScript, our new online editing platform. You won't have seen ReScript yet as it's still in development, but the JISC funding will allow us to consult widely with researchers as we design the interface and, we hope, will result in a resource which is intuitive and fully meets historians' needs.
ReScript is being tested using three very different texts in order to ensure that it is sufficiently flexible to cope with the range of editorial activity undertaken by historians. Two of those identified (Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and the St. Botolph Aldgate Parish Clerk’s Memorandum Books) already have editorial teams in place. The third, Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses, does not, but is an ideal candidate for a crowd-sourced edition, allowing a comparison between formal and informal editorial structures online.
We hope that you will not only follow our progress here, but also feed your opinions in to the project, whether by filling out an online survey or by taking part in a focus group. We'll post details of ways in which you can participate in the coming weeks. Watch this space!
ReScript is being tested using three very different texts in order to ensure that it is sufficiently flexible to cope with the range of editorial activity undertaken by historians. Two of those identified (Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and the St. Botolph Aldgate Parish Clerk’s Memorandum Books) already have editorial teams in place. The third, Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses, does not, but is an ideal candidate for a crowd-sourced edition, allowing a comparison between formal and informal editorial structures online.
We hope that you will not only follow our progress here, but also feed your opinions in to the project, whether by filling out an online survey or by taking part in a focus group. We'll post details of ways in which you can participate in the coming weeks. Watch this space!
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